The International Monetary Fund has raised Nigeria’s growth forecast for 2021 to 2.5 per cent from 1.5 per cent earlier announced in January. It disclosed this in its World Economic Outlook for April with the theme ‘Managing divergent recoveries’, which was released on Tuesday.
The report also projected a 16 per cent consumer price for the country in 2021. While projecting an improved global growth, the IMF noted that it was one year since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic. However, it added, the outlook presented daunting challenges related to divergences in the speed of recovery both across and within countries and the potential for persistent economic damage from the crisis.
Part of the report read, “After an estimated contraction of –3.3 per cent in 2020, the global economy is projected to grow at six per cent in 2021, moderating to 4.4 per cent in 2022.
“The contraction for 2020 is 1.1 percentage points smaller than projected in the October 2020 World Economic Outlook, reflecting the higher-than-expected growth outturns in the second half of the year for most regions after lockdowns were eased and as economies adapted to new ways of working.